Michael White - The Art of Murder

Ten yards along the lane, I could barely see my hand when I held it in front of me. I crouched on the ground close to the left-hand wall of the lane. Withdrawing the bloodied knife from my coat, I quickly gouged a hole in the filthy wet dirt. I used my fingers to scoop out the soil, then plunged my hand into my jacket pocket and pulled out the grey kidney. It felt like a fat sausage before it is placed in the pan. I let it fall into the soil and then used both hands to shovel the dirt back over it. I patted the ground flat, wiped my palms together and rose to my feet.

I walked back the way I had come, guided by the widening funnel of light between the lane’s brick walls. Emerging on to Osborn Street, I kept my head down. A voice startled me. ‘Watch out!’ Glancing up, I was just in time to see a hansom cab bearing down on me. I reacted with amazing alacrity, stepping back and missing the oncoming horse’s hoofs with barely an inch to spare. Water splashed my trousers and boots and I almost tripped over the high kerb.

Now, let me ask you this, dear lady: do you believe in serendipity? I always have. It is a mercurial force, but one that is nevertheless very real. Well, whether or not you believe it to be a part of the flux of Nature, I myself experienced a serendipitous moment as I caught my balance and steadied myself while the hansom rushed past me and the cabbie bellowed a malediction. The third woman on my list, Catherine Eddowes, was standing directly opposite me, on the far side of the street, soliciting for business.

Catherine, you may remember, worked at the Pav. She was, you will recall, the woman your husband was with the night I first met him. She was dressed in green and black, and on top of her long auburn hair wore a black bonnet trimmed with green velvet. She was clearly drunk, swaying unsteadily on the narrow pavement. I watched her as she tried her luck with a passer by. When the gentlemen rejected her, she swore at him, her voice muffled and lisping thanks to the fact that most of her upper teeth were missing.

Sauntering across the road, I stopped a few feet from her. She stank of booze. With a subtle nod, I indicated she should follow me down a narrow lane a few yards away along the street, another of the thousands of dark alleyways that splintered and dissected Whitechapel.

‘’Ang on, mithta,’ came Catherine Eddowes’s lisp from behind me. ‘Let’s thee ya money firtht.’

I turned slowly and she came right up to me, the gin stink oozing out of her. I looked down at her dirty face, a strand of frizzy hair escaping the bonnet to hang down over her eyes. She blew the straying hair away. I gave her a brief smile, pulled a shilling from my pocket and held it out in the palm of my hand. She gave me a furtive look and snatched the coin, before grabbing my collar. Giggling, she leaned back against the slimy brickwork, pulling me towards her.

‘For thith, you get thpechial treatment, like,’ she whispered and started to lower herself towards my groin.

‘No,’ I hissed. ‘Up.’ And swivelled her round to face the wall.

‘Whatever you wanth, dar …’

The blade made a squelching sound as it split open her throat. Blood sprayed out of her, hitting the wall. A few drops caught me in the face and got into my eyes. I cursed and let her fall at my feet. Her bonnet slid to one side. Bending down, I turned her face towards me. Her eyes were glazed over and her mouth was moving silently. That was when I first saw the light, at the very edge of my vision. I spun round and could just make out the figure of a policeman holding his lantern at arm’s length. The light from it illuminated his face — high cheekbones, bushy brows — his helmet with its silver badge, his voluminous cape revealed under the arm holding aloft the lantern. He saw me. I turned and ran.

There was a low brick wall at the end of the lane. The place was so dark I only saw the wall when I was almost upon it. Under normal circumstances, scrambling up the wet bricks would have been difficult, but I was fiercely energised, my heart racing, every muscle tensed. I heard the policeman blow his whistle, its shrill sound ricocheting from the walls around me. His lantern bobbed around, sending patches of light sliding here and there. I could see his silhouette as he crouched down beside Catherine Eddowes. In less than a second I was over the wall. I could hear his footsteps pursuing me now. He had reached the wall. ‘Stop!’ he screamed. ‘Stop! Murderer!’ He blew his whistle again. This time the sound was twice as loud. I heard voices, the beat of running feet, men answering the summons and looking for me. I sped off into the darkness.

Something crunched underfoot. I tripped, but just managed to maintain my balance. My outstretched hands came into contact with a large wooden object: a barrel of some sort. It fell to one side and clattered away. The whistle sounded again, and I sped through the narrow opening at the end of the alley.

A group of rowdy fellows was passing by. They were all extremely inebriated, swaying this way and that. I ducked past them and they remained completely oblivious to the commotion coming from the alley behind me. Sliding into a shadowy doorway, I gulped for air. It felt like the first full breath I had taken since slitting the throat of Catherine Eddowes. I noticed blood on my shirt. Pulling my jacket together at the front, I succeeded in covering up the crimson patch, and with my handkerchief wiped away the blood from around my eyes and drops of the stuff from about my mouth. I tasted a speck of it on my fingertip, relishing the iron tang. It was a flavour redolent of what the common herd would call ‘sin’. But as you are, of course, by now aware, dear lady, I have little respect for prudish taboos.

I did not have long to linger. I peered out of the doorway and noticed that there were a number of people around. I decided to cross the street, and was about to turn down a narrow lane when I heard that dreaded sound again — the policeman’s infernal whistle. I turned towards it involuntarily and there he was, at the end of the alley opposite, staring straight at me. I saw his mouth move and knew what he was about to yell.

‘Murderer!’ The bellow cut through the shuffling footsteps of drunks and silly giggles. After a second’s pause I ran as fast as I could down an adjacent lane.

It was dark, as are all those lanes and byways, the alleys and brick passageways and foul-smelling gaps between tenements. I was becoming heartily sick of the place … and the zeal of its local constabulary! A narrow strip of light told me I was heading towards a main thoroughfare, but I had no idea where I was. I ran on and finally burst into the light of Whitechapel Road. I glanced back and, to my horror, saw two police lanterns bobbing along, approaching me fast.

I dashed left, past a shop, and then saw a chained-up door with next to that an opening above which hung a sign METROPOLITAN DISTRICT RAILWAY, WHITECHAPEL AND MILE END. I ducked inside, leaped over the gate to the platform and sped along an echoing tunnel straight on to the platform.

I had never before been in an underground railway station, and if the circumstances had been different I think I would have been quite fascinated. But not at that moment. Without breaking stride, I sped along the platform, barging past the few people waiting for a train. Some way along the platform, I heard the loudest sound I had ever experienced in my life. I thought for a moment that the earth was caving in and ready to fall around my ears; that by some great misfortune I had decided to dive into this subterranean world just as Whitechapel Station was about to collapse. But it was nothing so dramatic. It was merely a train roaring into the station. Like a bellowing, trumpeting demon from the pages of a horror story, it shot out of the tunnel in a burst of light and steam and smoke and fumes.